A Forum for discussing emerging smart discoveries and emerging technologies with built-in intelligence or embedded smarts, as well as the new cognitive skills needed to succeed in the smart economy. The Smart Future is already here, just the last page hasn't been written yet! Every advance brings benefits as well as intrusions.
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October 04, 2013

Well-connected hemispheres of Einstein's brain may have sparked his brilliance

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. - The left and right hemispheres of Albert Einstein's brain were unusually wellconnected to each other and may have contributed to his brilliance, accordingto a new study conducted in part by Florida State University evolutionaryanthropologist Dean Falk.

"This study, more than any other to date, really gets at the 'inside' of Einstein's brain,"Falk said. "It provides new information that helps make sense of what isknown about the surface of Einstein's brain."

The study, "The Corpus Callosum of Albert Einstein's Brain: Another Clue to His HighIntelligence," was published in the journal Brain. Lead authorWeiwei Men of East China Normal University's Department of Physics developed anew technique to conduct the study, which is the first to detail Einstein'scorpus callosum, the brain's largest bundle of fibers that connects the twocerebral hemispheres and facilitates interhemispheric communication.

"This technique should be of interest to other researchers who study the brain's all-importantinternal connectivity," Falk said.

Men's technique measures and color-codes the varying thicknesses of subdivisions of the corpuscallosum along its length, where nerves cross from one side of the brain to theother. These thicknesses indicate the number of nerves that cross and thereforehow "connected" the two sides of the brain are in particular regions,which facilitate different functions depending on where the fibers cross alongthe length. For example, movement of the hands is represented toward the frontand mental arithmetic along the back.

In particular, this new technique permitted registration and comparison of Einstein's measurementswith those of two samples — one of 15 elderly men and one of 52 men Einstein'sage in 1905. During his so-called "miracle year" at 26 years old,Einstein published four articles that contributed substantially to thefoundation of modern physics and changed the world's views about space, time,mass and energy.

The research team's findings show that Einstein had more extensive connections between certainparts of his cerebral hemispheres compared to both younger and older controlgroups.

The research of Einstein's corpus callosum was initiated by Men, who requested thehigh-resolution photographs that Falk and other researchers published in 2012of the inside surfaces of the two halves of Einstein's brain. In addition toMen, the current research team included Falk, who served as second author; TaoSun of the Washington University School of Medicine; and, from East ChinaNormal University's Department of Physics, Weibo Chen, Jianqi Li, Dazhi Yin,Lili Zang and Mingxia Fan.

March 24, 2010

I've been compiling a list of qualitative and quantitative foresight (prediction) methods and the total has passed over 50.

New Scientist magazine this week reviews one quantitative method called Bayesian Game Theory, in surprisingly quite an understandable fashion, that even a lay person like me can understand...well maybe not all the math details but the overall workings are quite clear.

They turn to Bruce Bueno de Mesquita, a professor of politics at New York University, who back in 1979 developed a game theory based prediction model, which he calls predictioneering. He says" I can predict events and decisions that involve negotiations, coercion (lies, bluffing, reneging on promises), cooperation or bullying." The model predicts what people will do in "strategic situations" where the outcome also depends on other people's decisions ie domestic politics, foreign policy, geopolitical conflicts, business decisions and social interactions.

New Scientist writes: "

"Over the past 30 years, Bueno de Mesquita has made thousands of predictions about hundreds of issues from geopolitics to personal problems. Overall, he claims, his hit rate is about 90 per cent. So how does he do it?

Examples: Terrorism & Climate Change

Terrorism:

"Bueno de Mesquita recently used it to make a prediction on the political situation in Pakistan. Working with a group of students, he asked how willing the Pakistani government would be to pursue Al-Qaida and Taliban militants in its territory, and how the US government could exert influence on their decision."

In January 2008 the students fed in data on all the players, including the US, Pakistan's then president Pervez Musharraf and other leading Pakistani politicans. Their assumption was that the US would offer foreign aid to persuade Pakistan's leaders to target the terrorists, and Pakistan would try to extract the maximum amount of aid possible from the US.

The model predicted that to get maximum cooperation from Pakistan, the US would need to donate at least $1.5 billion in 2009, double the projected 2008 figure. In return for this Pakistan would pursue the terrorists on a scale of 80 out of 100, but no more. In other words, the leadership would make considerable effort to reduce the terrorist threat but not to completely eliminate it. "The Pakistani government are no fools," explains Bueno de Mesquita. "They know that the money will dry up if Al-Qaida and the Taliban are destroyed. So they will rein the threat in and reduce it, but not utterly destroy it."

The outcome? According to Bueno de Mesquita, the US government authorised $1.5 billion in foreign aid to Pakistan in 2009, and the Pakistani leadership sustained pursuit of the militants at that level. "We have done very well," says Bueno de Mesquita.

Climate Change:

So what of the future? Another of Bueno de Mesquita's recent predictions addresses the future of climate change negotiations up to 2050. Depressingly, he predicts that although the world will negotiate tougher greenhouse gas reductions than in the Kyoto protocol, in practise these are likely to be abandoned as Brazil, India and China rise in power in relation to the European Union and the US."

See: The Man who sees the Future, New Scientist Volume 250 No 2752 March 20,2010, pg 42

February 09, 2010

Don't count Yulia Tymoshenko, the incumbant Prime Minister of Ukraine and the Tymoshenko Block (BYuT) out of the Ukrainian Presidential election race just yet. Most of the media around the world seems to have written her off along with the Orange Revolution, that occurred in Ukraine in 2004. It may be premature for Viktor Yanukovych to be popping Russian champaign corks.

She's too smart and cunning not a have a trump card up her sleeve. This time, she’s in government and has more control over the election process and the SBU than during the Orange Revolution in 2004. The SBU-Ukraine's secret police, like the CIA – won’t be complicit in Party of Regions fraud, and they will be there to detect vote-rigging and pre-vote and votor list rigging should it occur .

In fact she is more then likely to use to her benefit, the fact that the Party of Regions would probably try to pull off another repeat election fraud in certain regions again, (like in 2004) She can shape circumstances to her advantage, and she’s smart enough to do just that..

Imagine the following ficticious scenario, which I just made up--- The Tymoshenko government, fully expecting election fraud from Yanukovych , prints election ballots with a special invisible water marks, serial codes or other invisible identifying marks, that distinguish between real and illegal ballots, which no one outside of a small group in government is aware of .

(Election Results above-Hat tip Roman Z)

Tymoshenko is only out by 880,000 votes officially and claims that she should be winning by 0.8 % according to her count.

Nullifying the 1 million ballots that she says were rigged (due to added phantom voters by Party of Regions (PoR) would put her ahead by a few hundred thousand votes.

Watch her pull an election rabbit out of the hat and force a new run off or have key Pro Yanukovych districts where fraud occurred –such as Crimea, Donetsk and Luhansk challenged in court and the results declared null and void.

Tymoshenko may turn out to be the real come back Queen & Ukraine's first female President and Yanukovych -a two time looser.

KIEV, Ukraine -- A Ukraine court in Kiev suspended last week's presidential election results Wednesday to allow for investigation into the prime minister's allegations of fraud.

Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko filed a lawsuit Tuesday with the Higher Administrative Court to demand a repeat vote of the second round of the presidential elections, which she lost to incumbent President Viktor Yanukovych by a 48.95 percent to 45.47 percent margin.

The court said it would examine evidence Tymoshenko submitted that alleges more than 1 million votes were stolen from her, the Ukraine News Agency reported.

N.B. on a personal note.....Tea witha future Prime Minister of Ukraine, Yulia Tymoshenko, circa 2002 before the Orange Revolution, or maybe it was just the beginnings... (Hhmmm...I just noticed the colour of the tea cups & the flowers)

November 26, 2009

Our education system teaches us to avoid errors and mistakes, we are taught to aim to get the right answer…however in nature it’s not as clear cut as that...in some cases errors are helpfull.

A good rule of thumb in science is "look under your nose." and "challenge assumptions." The following story is a good example of how complex our body is and what we don't know about how our body works.

When cells are confronted with an invading virus or bacteria or exposed to an irritating chemical, they protect themselves by going off their DNA recipe and inserting the wrong amino acid into new proteins to defend them against damage, scientists have discovered.

These "regulated errors" comprise a novel non-genetic mechanism by which cells can rapidly make important proteins more resistant to attack when stressed, said Tao Pan, Professor of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at the University of Chicago. A team of 18 scientists from the University of Chicago and the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease led by Pan and Jonathan Yewdell will publish the findings tomorrow, Thursday in the journal Nature.

"This mechanism allows every protein to get some protection," Pan said. "The genetic code is considered untouchable, but this is a non-genetic strategy used in cells to create a bodyguard for proteins."

Proteins are constructed through a process called translation where cellular elements use the genetic code to guide the assembly of building blocks called amino acids into the correct sequence. First, a copy of the DNA, called messenger RNA, is made and transferred to a cellular structure called a ribosome. Transfer RNAs (tRNA), one for each of the 20 amino acids used in building proteins, read the messenger RNA code and bring the proper amino acids to the ribosome, where they are bonded together to form a complete protein.

Each tRNA can be attached to only one of 20 amino acids, a specificity that prevents errors during the construction of proteins. In artificial laboratory preparations, scientists have observed that only one out of every 10,000 amino acids is placed into a protein incorrectly, and thus protein errors were thought to be exceptionally rare.

But Jeffrey Goodenbour, University of Chicago graduate student and co-lead author along with Nir Netzer of the NIAID, decided to look at how often tRNA errors, called misacylations, occurred in live cells.

After developing a novel technique for measuring these errors, published for the first time in this paper, the authors were surprised to find a much higher error rate in those cells for the amino acid methionine. As high as one out of every 100 methionines was incorrectly placed in proteins, they found.

When the cells were stressed by exposure to a virus, bacteria or a toxic chemical such as hydrogen peroxide, that error rate went even higher, as up to 10 percent of methionines placed into new proteins were different from what the gene specified.

"That was 1,000 times more than the textbook says should be there," Pan said.

Further experiments revealed that it was always the same amino acid, methionine, placed incorrectly into new proteins. Methionine is one of only two amino acids to carry sulfur atoms on its side chains, a feature that allows it to neutralize dangerous molecules called reactive oxygen species (ROS) that form inside an infected or stressed cell. ROS can damage proteins through a chemical process called oxidation, but methionine can be oxidized (and restored through a process called reduction) without being permanently damaged.

"The idea is that methionine can protect you from having oxidation of the active site of protein, which would ultimately completely block function of the protein," Goodenbour said. "You end up reducing the total reactive oxygen species load in the cell. It's a very interesting mechanism."

Cells normally put methionines near important parts of a protein to protect those segments from being damaged by reactive oxygen species. When the cell is under stress, and the amount of ROS increases, the number of methionine "errors" is ramped up tenfold, allowing new proteins to be even more resistant to attack.

"Think of a boxing match," Pan said. "If you put methionine close to active site, the reactive oxygen species has to get past it to get to the active site residues for oxidization. You've put something right in front of it so a protein can take a hit. If you have a lot of methionines, to knock this protein out will take many, many hits. So this is a strategy used in cells to create a bodyguard for a protein."

A remaining puzzle is to determine why extra protective methionines are not encoded as part of the DNA in the first place, instead of being left to the post-genetic random placement described in this paper. Pan suggests that random placement of the amino acids makes proteins even more resistant to attack, since no two are created alike. (Pay attention computer platform and anti-virus software designers !!)

"This sounds chaotic and doesn't make a lot of sense according to the textbook," Pan said. "But this way the cells can always ensure that a subset of these proteins is somewhat less sensitive to the extra hits. I think that's the most important part of this - to make every protein molecule different - and you cannot do this genetically."

November 03, 2009

A brand new issue, an uncertain ambiguous item or an unexpected discovery falls on your desk on Monday morning. You need to quickly decide if it’s an immediate threat or opportunity for your organization that requires some type of action or if it’s a non-issue that can be ignored for the time being.

How do managers or entrepreneurs decide that? Are there tradeoffs? People often use the half full or half empty glass visual as a metaphor to distinguish between the optimists (opportunity seekers) and pessimists (threat-focused or threat avoiders). But it’s not as easy as it may seem at first. To decide which side of the ledger you fall under, try the following three steps

1) Trust your gut feel

Trust you initial gut feel. You will find that you are usually right. How do you feel about issue X? What does your instinct tell you about this new or emerging issue or situation? Is it an opportunity or threat? Or possibly both? In the Opportunity Clinic we typically observe four different responses:

-I feel positive and optimistic about this issue

-I sense a queasy feeling in the pit of your stomach. I’m mostly negative and pessimistic about this.

-or are you simply Indifferent or passive? I don’t see any current or future impacts on my business.

-or are you uncertain? It could be both a threat or challenge or an opportunity, depending on changing or uncertain circumstances

What’s your gut answer? __________________________

2) Try a more rational, critical analytical approach

Run through the list of 31 attributes and opposite matching pairs below in Table 1. On each line, circle an attribute (with a solid line) either on the left or right hand side of the table depending on how you view an issue. If you are unsure, draw a circle with a dotted line, to remind you to look for more information to reinforce your decision.

Count up the number of circles in each column to tell you if you view the issue as a threat or opportunity or possibly both.

Has you view changed from your gut feel decision in step 1 or has it been reinforced?

3) Repeat step 1 and 2 with others

Repeat step 1 and 2 with others in your department, division or other parts of the organization. What do external stakeholders say? What’s the general consensus on an emerging issue?

Table 1-How do you view an emerging issue? Attributes to tell you if the glass is half full or half empty?

February 20, 2009

Last week we introduced Part 10 of 28 "First Impressions” trap. Today I'd like to offer some more examples of how to address that perception oversight.

As mentioned last week...new ventures often do not correctly anticipate real market opportunities or the best strategies of addressing them, so they are forced to adapt and modify their approach over time. This is even more critical in a recession /depression and is illustrated by a classic 1985 quote by Peter Drucker.

“When a new venture does succeed, more often than not it is in a market other than the one it was originally intended to serve, with products and services not quite those with which it had set out, bought in large part by customers it did not even think of when it started, and used for a host of purposes besides the ones for which the products were first designed.”--Source: Drucker, P. (1985). Innovation and Entrepreneurship: Practice and Principles. New York: Harper & Row. ( p. 189)

Tactics for Overcoming the "First Impressions” trap.

The first step is a mental and perceptual one--to admit that you were wrong and go back to the drawing board to explore alternate opportunity windows. Here are some more examples from the Opportunity Clinic, which has over 350 Opportunity Scenarios or Windows in its database.

Opportunity Scenario # 92 End User Challenge

An innovation designed by a medical doctor to detect elderly patient falls was found to be too expensive ($1000) by nursing homes, and the immediate nature of the signal was seen as of limited benefit. A more extensive analysis identified the benefits to fire services involved in fighting forest fires – especially the immediate notification of a fall. Fire fighters now have this as standard equipment

“A wireless company, interested in integrating paper and electronic systems, initially targeted hospitals in Ontario as the first (and largest) application. While this market is still the one with the most potential, the longer then anticipated sales cycles and the long lead times on decision-making in hospitals – was increasing the company’s cash burn rate and was bring in no actual revenue. This caused the company to shift focus and challenge their underlying assumptions. They started to look at providing a solution to other segments – they chose independent trucking companies, who could make a decision to buy the system in less than two months. They had the same paper integration concerns, when truckers were crossing the boarder and had to deal with paperwork burdens.”

A company who was developing a commercial water purifier system, decided that the water should be store in stainless steel water bottles – due to concerns about polycarbonate bottles. While the water purifier is still in development, the water bottles themselves turned out to be of great interest to retailers, then their original product idea (the water purifier system) – and this product range became the core of a successful new business. Over a million bottles were sold in one year, when concerns about bis-phenol A surfaced in the media.

An innovation designed for the general consumer market was planned to launch through major retailers – such as Canadian Tire, Shoppers Drug Mart etc. Upon investigation, the entrepereneur found that initially most consumers would not see the immediate benefits – limiting market success. However – individuals with comprised immune systems (such as AIDS) would immediately see the benefits – but would not create enough demand to pull the product through traditional retailer channels. As a result, a web store and web marketing campaign was seen as the initial launch strategy.

To incorporate the Opportunity Clinic into your class, business planning process or to arrange for a key note speech on Opportunity Recognition for a future meeting, conference or forum, call us at 1-416-819-9667

Walter Derzko

Smart Economy

Toronto

Author of the soon-to-be-released book: Hard TimesGolden Opportunities.. about opportunity recognition in a recession/ depression features 45 opportunity scenarios.

Expert, Consultant and Keynote Speaker on Emerging Smart Technologies, Innovation, Strategic Foresight, Business Development, Lateral Creative Thinking and author of an upcoming book on the Smart Economy "

February 06, 2009

The long-awaited Martin Florida report makes as its top recommendation: Harness the full creative potential of Ontarians beyond the creative elite professionals, entrepreneurs and artists.

This is an admission of the strategic failure of our education policy.

We are still stuck an elitist 19th and 20th century education mindset. We generally teach and test for rote memorization of information-which is soon obsolete and not for our ability to create anything new. The only significant way to harness this full creative potential of all Ontarians is for the Minister of Education to take a bold step and decide that all public school children get at least one hour a week of direct teaching of both critical and creative lateral thinking skills. We already know how to do this - we've been effectively teaching cognitive thinking skills to our gifted children, (who go on the join the creative class), for over 40 years but have chosen to ignore all the rest of society, to our economic peril. This means a tough decsion of adding an hour a week to the curriculum or dropping an hour from some irrelevent subject area.

In fact, parents who have been sending their kids to school over the past four decades, have full justification to ask for a refund of the education component of their property tax, if not a class action suite against the education system. The Ministry of Education has broken its social contract to society, by failing to ensure that our youth get the kind of education (both complemetary parts-the knowledge and the cognitive skills to use and apply that knowledge) to permit them not just survive but thrive in the 21 century.

".......Ours is the age that is proud of machines that think and suspicious of men who try to." -- H. Mumford Jones

Expert, Consultant and Keynote Speaker on Emerging Smart Technologies, Innovation, Strategic Foresight, Business Development, Lateral Creative Thinking and author of an upcoming book on the Smart Economy "

"I just got a call from a good buddy leaving Loblaws, which recently introduced a save-the-planet charge of 5 cents a bag for those no-goodniks that don't bring their own.

"I'm just leaving the Superstore now," says buddy."Everyone is bringing their own bags.

"And you would not believe how this has slowed down the checkout process. At least 30% slower."

I witnessed this myself at a Wal-Mart. The bags are not all the same size. Some are floppy and need to be held open. One guy was handing the bags over one at a time.

Last week when I commented about the cost of human-delivered services, I wasn't even thinking about this.

Researchers like me know how much customers hate waiting in line. They hate watching inefficiency in line. It used to be just the brown rice brotherhood that took their own bag. Soon everyone will be doing it. Yikes! "

These are touch-points for the opportunity savvy entrepreneur that can 1) recognize this change event or shift and notice the unintended consequences ..they are usually in your face if you only take the time to look and ask a few strategic questions and 2) find and fill an opportunity space or opportunity window here with your unique solution.

Here's a freebee for someone..... design a cloth bag holder for your store-bought cloth bags, so that the checkout clerk can scan and pack groceries right away into your cloth bag, (but not for bags from the competion's store).

Expert, Consultant and Keynote Speaker on Emerging Smart Technologies, Innovation, Strategic Foresight, Business Development, Lateral Creative Thinking and author of an upcoming book on the Smart Economy "

January 17, 2009

There’s an old saying…”the best time to start a new business is the day after the recession ends.” The $64K question is not when will the recession end but what will the recovery look like? Will it be V-shaped, U-shaped, W-shaped, v-W-shaped, J-shaped, L-shaped or extended L-shaped? Which of these seven scenarios will play out? UPDATE: see cartoon on the right from March 2009

To anticipate this, we have to look at what tools do managers and entrepreneurs have to help them predict, track and measure where they and the economy are heading?

I dusted off some old notes, slides and workshop handout materials from just after post 9/11 as the economy topped out and in hindsight, was headed into a recession, triggered by the terrorist attacks on New York city and Washington. The materials were from a set of experimental workshops that I designed for Andrew Maxwell, who at the time was at the incubator / accelerator at the Innovations Foundation at the University of Toronto, when they were still located on 243 College Street, before moving into the new MaRS facility.

One workshop was on Designing Winning Business Models and the second was called 12 Tools and Techniques for Surviving Thriving and Managing in a Volatile and Turbulent Business Climate.

Could some of these same principles and lessons learned from these workshops apply to today’s recessionary / depressionary climate? Most certainly!!

Designing a robust and adaptive business model could determine if you dive, merely survive or thrive in a recession.

Some of the key points and questions from the Designing Winning Business Models workshop include the following points:

What were/are the traditional business models/ revenue models in my industry and what can I learn from them?

What are the prevailing business models/ revenue models in my industry today?

What can I learn from mapping my current business landscape?

What’s my current business model look like and what are all the components?

What are the assumptions (tacit and explicit) behind my current business model and are they still valid? robust under changing conditions? various recovery scenarios ? (V-shaped, U-shaped, W-shaped, v-W-shaped, J-shaped, L-shaped or extended L-shaped? )

What are the changing consumer or business values, attitudes and behaviors and are they reflected or aligned with my current business model

What changes, trends, driving factors and issues are forcing me to rethink my current business model?

How do I surface assumptions about the current and near-future business climate?

What’s broken in my existing business model and how do I mitigate the faults and defects?

How do I design a new viable system using scenario planning, systems dynamics and viable systems modeling?

How do I model potential major discontinuities, wild cards, disruptions into my revenue model and business model?

What were the lessons learned from the dot.com bubble, e-commerce failures and the collapse of the “green tech” and alternative energy markets? How do I mitigate that in the future from new emerging technologies.

What cognitive thinking skills do I need to deploy to come up with novel and difficult to copy concepts for a brilliant new business model?

Tomorrow we’ll look at the 12 predictive tools that should be in your managerial or entrepreneurial toolkit to help you predict and design opportunity windows for both the downward leg of the recession and the upward leg of the recovery.

Expert, Consultant and Keynote Speaker on Emerging Smart Technologies, Innovation, Strategic Foresight, Business Development, Lateral Creative Thinking and author of an upcoming book on the Smart Economy "

December 13, 2008

Both US president elect Obama and Canadian Prime Minister Steven Harper have promised "New Deal" like infrastructure programs for the USA and Canada to spend their way out of a depression / recession (pick one). A new term is needed to describe this type of new intelligence-infused infrastructure. I call it the cognistructure-an infrastructure that thinks for itself.

Here's my list of top 10 smart technologies that both Olbama and Harper should have their eye on and on their planning radar screens; (Niche applications 10-6, more ubiquitous applications 5-1)